


Tales from a Witch

by WritesWithWater



Category: Numenera (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25345837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritesWithWater/pseuds/WritesWithWater
Summary: An eclectic collection of stories centered around Witch, just one member of a party lost in the ninth world.





	Tales from a Witch

**Author's Note:**

> The party helps a town prepare for an attack. Witch has much to lament

“How many people live in a town like this?”  
“How many fighters does that give them?”  
These are the questions I find myself asking when there’s an abhuman invasion due. The hut door swings shut with a wooden thunk.  
It hasn’t rained in some time. 

“How quickly could these huts and houses catch alight?”

Not all of them, thankfully. The benefits of a mining town, I suppose. Their walls are made of stone alongside some of the communal buildings. I imagine that’s where they’ll put their children, elderly and any other folk too weak to defend themselves. My weight shifts as I lift a box off the ground, it’s full of medical supplies. We’re distributing them about the town, Jex assigned some of the braver townsfolk to me and I’ll be teaching them the basics of bandaging. Perhaps if any of them are smart enough to live through the attack I could take one as a student. 

_When have I been one to consider working with peasant folk?_

As I walk through the town, I picture it in flames, bodies, screaming and blood everywhere. I pass a mother in silence and I imagine the fear in her eyes as the fossick invaders cut her down and torch the houses surrounding me, her begging for the life of her child. They wouldn’t understand anyway, they don’t speak the same language. All that hatred, all that fear, all that loss. The only difference if we win is there’ll be less fire.

We could easily have been on the other side of this mess, standing with the incoming horde instead of against. All it took was a couple of small mistakes. A town with a water shortage. A group of hardheaded kids with bundles of curiosity and hope. A group of adventurers hired to solve their problems, adventurers with weapons who were not armed to deal with encountering a tribe with abhumans. _They were peaceful, they let us go!_ And then we killed yet four of their people in yet another misunderstanding of the marred history of humans and abhumans.

That’s what this really boils down to. Race. We’re humans and they’re abhumans. Our kind shuns and murders theirs so they have to kill us. Otherwise more of us would come, in droves, and they’d be slaughtered like lambs. 

“We could always leave” M-ry’s suggestion rings in my mind and there’s a twang of guilt in my heart as I actually consider it. I’m used to being chased out by angry mobs, what’s to say a couple of days after this is over they don’t show up with pitchforks and torches, ready to kill the Witch living in their stead.  
But no. I can’t leave. Not when I had a hand in causing this mess. We may be of the same species but I refuse to stoop to their level. I still have much good left to do in this world.

I turn a corner and the temporary station comes into view, two of my helpers standing by for my orders. The wall stands behind them and god I hope it’s stronger than the depressing facade it presents. “Take these and fit as many as you can into the bags you have” I tell them and they get to work. A hefty sigh escapes me.  
Very soon I’ll be saving some of the lives I helped doom.


End file.
